Addicks Beaten By Stoke

Alan Pardew's troops are still to collect all 3 points in a Championship match, after they went down 2-1 at Stoke.

Maybe the fans are all too confident, or the players are still on holiday, but unless Charlton buck their ideas up an instant return to The Premiership is a long way off.

Charlton were embarrassed by a Stoke side that went for direct football and no fancy playmaking. Charlton lacked strength and belief and in the end Stoke fully deserved all 3 points.

Andy Reid opened the scoring for Charlton with a free-kick, which luckily took a big deflection off Jon Fortune's rear end. The goal came against the run of play and Charlton didn't capitalise and allowed Stoke to equalise in less than a minute after.

Ricardo Fuller equalised in spectacular style after controlling the ball with his back to goal and curling his shot past Weaver and into the back of the net.

Forward Jon Parkin then came off the bench to score the winner and put his side top of the Championship table.

Charlton were always second best and you cannot complain about the result. We just didn't look interested and with the injuries we picked up on the night we had holes all over the pitch.

Paddy McCarthy had to replace Yassin Moutaouakil who looked badly injured, and the former Leicester stopper was shown up in both of Stokes goals. It's no surprise why he started the match on the bench.

Pardew knew the game at Stoke would be hard, and with the injuries we got, there was only going to be one winner.

After the match Alan Pardew said: 'It is not a disgrace to lose here. There are only seven or eight teams in the division who are as good or better than Stoke at home.

'I thought we were unlucky to lose Yassin Moutaouakil to injury early in the second half and I think that cost us the game.

'We were beginning to show our quality and I was starting to feel comfortable, but losing Yassin meant we didn't have another natural right-back. We were a bit disorganised and Stoke took advantage of that.'

The one thing Charlton lack is strength. We are a small team and we don't have anyone that looks like putting the boot in and wearing their heart on the sleeve.

Come on Pards sort the lads out or we will become a regular in this league.

it may take some time to get the message across to the fans, but this is a new team, and if we had some luck, we would be top now, unfortunately man city came and stole our good luck whilst our backs were turned.